David Gold, the "furious" co-owner of West Ham, has criticised the "arrogance" of those including Lord Coe who drew up the original plans for the Olympic Stadium – despite his club finally being confirmed as the main tenant of the arena.

Following a tortuous process in which they had already been awarded the stadium once, only for the deal to collapse amid legal challenges, West Ham have signed a contract to move to the venue in time for the 2016-17 season. By the time they move into the 54,000-capacity stadium, it could have cost at least £630m.

Boris Johnson, the London mayor, and West Ham's vice-chair, Karren Brady, who was negotiating the finer points of the deal with the London Legacy Development Corporation chief executive, Dennis Hone, until the early hours of Friday morning, hailed it as a "win-win deal". Brady promised fans it would "look and feel like West Ham's stadium", despite sharing it with athletics, concerts and other sports.

The conversion work, which will begin in October after a number of sporting and music events in the stadium this summer, will cost between £150m and £190m, of which West Ham will pay only £15m. But that did not stop Gold from going on the offensive, describing the original decision in February 2007 to press ahead and build the £429m stadium without a football club on board as "arrogant".

Mindful of delays and cost overruns at Wembley, it was decided to forge ahead with the construction of a stadium that would retain a track but could be reduced in capacity if required after the Games.

"I'm angry from a taxpayer point of view, not a West Ham point of view," he said. "It has impacted on West Ham, because the LLDC has had to negotiate a tougher deal with us. It was arrogance. It wasn't even foolhardy, it was a form of arrogance.

"A child would know that the main issue after building the stadium for the Olympics was what was going to happen in the future. Go back over 24 years, you've got six stadiums and five of them are obsolete. What were they thinking?"

A new cantilevered roof will be installed to cover the stadium and the entire 25,000-capacity lower-tier seating bowl will be removed to make way for retractable seats. Hone said he was increasingly confident a way could be found to host Rugby World Cup matches in 2015 during a break in construction.

"This is a truly momentous milestone for London's spectacular Olympic Stadium ensuring its credible and sustainable future," said Johnson. "Through this deal with West Ham we are defying the gloomsters who predicted this landmark would become a dusty relic."

He had insisted on a so-called "embarrassment clause" to ensure that taxpayers would share in any upside if Gold and his co-owner, David Sullivan, sold the club at a profit in the first 10 years of their 99-year lease. "The stadium is a fantastic national asset. The key point I'd like to make is that the taxpayers will be making money now from the stadium. There is a lot of revenue sharing," said Johnson.

There were immediate protests from those who claim taxpayers' money has been used to subsidise a Premier League club after it emerged that an extra £25m from the department of community and local government would go towards installing a new roof, retractable seats and permanent toilets and catering facilities.

A London Assembly member, Andrew Boff, called for the deal to be scrapped. "It is a disgrace that another £25m from the public purse will now be used to prop up this agreement," he said, calling the stadium "a developing white elephant".

West Ham will pay an ongoing rent, understood to be around £2.5m and linked to RPI, and share the proceeds of naming rights and catering income with the special purpose vehicle set up by the LLDC and Newham Council.

Newham has borrowed £40m, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport has supplied £38.7m and a further £25m will come from the department of community and local government. The rest will be borrowed by the LLDC.

Newham Mayor Sir Robin Wales said the Council expected to pay the loan back through the proceeds of its 35% profit share, as well as make additional income that would be spent on council services.

Then sports minister Richard Caborn has said he was voted down at a meeting in February 2007 by the London 2012 chairman, Lord Coe, the then Olympics minister, Tessa Jowell, the then mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and then British Olympic Association chairman, Lord Moynihan.

"We know Seb Coe promised it was going to be an athletics stadium and we understand that. But you still need a solution and the solution is to bring in other sports. Now, of course, we're talking about a multi-sport facility here," said Gold.

"From a taxpayer's point of view, the solution you've heard today was the only solution. We've come to an equitable deal, a fair deal."

Sullivan said that the deal would allow the club to become "a force to be reckoned with", although the agreement contains a clause that allows the annual rent to be reduced if West Ham go down. The club promised to give away 100,000 tickets a year and make prices affordable as well as competing for corporate hospitality customers.

Leyton Orient chairman Barry Hearn is pursuing a judicial review of the case on the basis that all bidders were supposed to consider ground sharing. He has claimed that Orient will be "crushed" if they are not allowed to share the stadium with West Ham, but has conceded he is unlikely to succeed.